Their Mothers Thought About Aborting Them

I have two favourite soaps. I watch them both religiously and sometimes even watch the omnibus on top of what I have already watched.

These are Hollyoaks and Eastenders. What I am about to touch upon is something that was raised while watching a couple of episodes of Hollyoaks.

First of all, let me introduce you to the McQueen family.

Mama Mcqueen:

She has been let down by men all her life and is raising 6 children singlehandedly

Mama McQueen has 6 kids.

Jacqui:

She is the hard-nut of the McQueen clan who has just been released from jail. She used to look after her siblings whilst Mama was at work. She made them take things and put them into Michaela’s pram

Carmel:

She is brash and recently had a boob job which makes her a instant hit with the men. However, she is also quite naíve, and is prone to being taken advantage of by any spurious admirer with a silver tongue and flash car.

Mercedes

She is a brash and domineering character that always causes trouble. She once tried to pull off a fraudulent injury compensation claim.

Tina:

She is a lot more studious than all her sisters, as well as being conservative in dress and behaviour.

Jean-Paul:

The only male in the family and the youngest. Mama hopes he will make a name for himself after being let down by her daughters and husbands

Michaela:

Mischievous when she wants to be, calculating when she needs to be. She pressured her best friend into having sex with her short-term boyfriend, so that her own boyfriend wonldn’t dump her.

So there you have it. 5 girls and 1 boy. They all have different fathers and are somewhat troublesome, apart from the boy Jean Paul and one of the girl’s, Tina. Tina is called a “nerd,” because she likes reading and doesn’t sleep around like the other sisters. She stands out for another reason too. Her father is black, whilst all the others have both a white mother and father.

In one episode Tina is fed up with her family. She feels like she doesn’t belong. She is extra pissed off because her mama picked up a black man in a bar the night before, and when she wakes up he is in the house walking around making himself tea, without a care in the world. She thinks that her mother is disrespecting herself and her daughters. I guess it is this black man’s presence that gets her thinking about herself and how she came about. She asks her mother why the others all know their fathers and she doesn’t. Her mother becomes distressed and doesn’t want to talk about it.

After this Tina begins to act moody around the house and ignores her mother. Her mother is tormented by what is going on but offers up no explanation. By the next day Mama has reached breaking point and in the middle of her driving test sees Tina and Mercedes walking on the street and beckons them over. She pushes Mercedes onto her instructor with a wink that says, “Show im ya tits love!” and grabs Tina into the car. Mercedes and the instructor piss off and Tina and Mama are left face to face.

They have a heart to heart and it is revealed that Tina’s dad was a clever and brilliant man but he wasn’t ready to have a child and gave Mama the money for an abortion. Tina listens intently throughout the talk. There are no signs of distress even at the mention of her father’s rejection of her. It is when her mother says that she accepted the abortion money that Tina starts wilding out, sobbing and crying and saying,

“How could you?” over and over again.

This is the bit I didn’t get. Obviously her Mama didn’t have an abortion because if she did then she wouldn’t be alive, so what’s the problem? Mama tells the story about how Tina’s dad gave her the abortion money and then she walked around all day unsure about what to do. Tina sobs some more like her world is unravelling before her. Mama continues and then says with a big bright smile,

“So I went a bought the biggest and best pram to show off my baby.”

Tina is nonplussed. The tears are fewer but she is still muttering,

“But you thought about having an abortion? How could you… how could you?”

Mama comforts her,

“I didn’t know what to do love, but I made the best choice ever in keeping you!”

Tina is comforted a little but you can still tell that she is very upset by hearing that she could have been aborted.

Tina has never shown signs of being pro-life, so I doubt very much that it is the moral aspect of the situation that gets to her, after all she lives in a house full of crooks and women who think nothing of bringing men home from the club to “make sexy time” with in a shared room. So what exactly is her problem? If she is not against abortion then what does it matter if it was going to be her or another foetus that could have been aborted?

I’ve noticed this situation arise in other programmes and the end result is always the same. There is major freaking out and the kid (or adult) who could have been aborted goes off the rails. Obviously I can’t speak for anyone else, as this has never happened to me, but I think it is a bit far fetched.

My work colleague told me today that his mother almost went through with an abortion when she was pregnant with him. His father and his father’s friends were pressuring her and she even made it to the clinic, but then at the last minute decided against going through with the operation. I asked him how he felt about that, whether it made him feel differently towards her or whether he was angry that she even thought about it. Au contraire, he said that he felt blessed to know that his mother had in fact kept him. He said that after knowing this he always felt extra-special.

Maybe thinking about the possibility that you could have been aborted before birth, makes people question their existence? If you have grown up in a loving household, are you going to feel unloved after finding out that your mother considered abortion as an option before you were born?

I personally would feel indifferent (I think, obviously I cannot say for sure.) I am pro-choice, so I can only see myself getting horribly upset if I was strictly pro-life and was upset because my mother had such differing moral standards. I mean what difference does it make? Don’t women who have unplanned pregnancies generally think about all the options that are available to them, even if they do decide to keep and raise the child in the end?

So tell me if you were talking with your mother and she revealed that she thought about having an abortion whilst pregnant with you, would you feel differently towards/ about her? do you think that you would be upset or angry?